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Monday, October 4, 2010

Tombstone Shadow Boxes

If you remember, I picked up three shadow boxes at a garage sale a while back. Last week, I came up with a brilliant (if I do say so myself) idea for them.

I pass by an extremely old cemetery on my way to work every day and I have always wanted to stop and look at it. The tombstones are practically falling apart and the whole place has a certain charm to it (as much as a cemetery can, I guess). So anywho, I stopped there on my way home Wednesday and snapped some photos to be transformed into creepy Halloween artwork (I'll admit... I was a little freaked out and got out of there as quickly as I could). Most of the tombstones are so old that you can't even read them anymore. It's just so interesting to look at them and think someone has been buried there since 1845. I mean, that's a looooooong time ago. Okay, kinda creepy to think about, but interesting too. Here are the photos before, and then after I Photoshopped them.

First, I printed two copies of each photo on high-quality photo paper.

On one of the copies of each photo, I cut out one tombstone using a craft knife.

Then I took the other photo and mounted it to the backerboard of the shadow box using double-sided tape.

Pop-up Glue Dots... my favorite! I placed one glue dot in the middle of the tombstone...

...and set the cut-out on top for a 3D effect.

I used Martha Stewart's bat template as a starting point and free-handed some bats on black cardstock and cut them out.

Bats! Hmm, just realized I forgot to take a picture of them post-glitter, but just imagine 3 of these bats all glitterized in silver.

I used a piece of transite to attach the bats to the top of the shadow boxes, using regular tape.

The finished product! Pretty creepy, right? I added some black rose petals and a skull leftover from my Skulls and Spiders Wreath to complete the project. It's extremely hard to take decent photos in bad lighting of objects with glass. Have you ever tried it? Extremely difficult, so I'm sorry if these photos don't do it justice.

What do you think? I like that these can easily be changed for the seasons or whatever whim I'm on that week.